There is an unmet need for the development of a closed environment for pharmaceutical formulation that will allow healthcare professionals to easily compound and dispense therapeutically valuable and medically necessary medications, that are commercially unavailable due to relatively short drug stability, stringent compounding/manufacturing requirements and/or lack of proper facilities for sterile preparation of pharmaceutical products, from powder to a solution/suspension form.
One ophthalmic mixing system that currently exists includes an open environment transfer of liquid diluents to an open environment glass bottle with powder that is mixed and then closed with a glass ophthalmic bottle dropper tip with rubber or silicone bulb. This product is available as Phospholine Iodide® (echothiophate) from Wyeth-Ayerst. It is referred to as an open system because it does not contain any features to prevent the contamination of the product during mixing and use or to protect the compounder from exposure to the product.